Quake
by LoquaciousQuark
Summary: After a cave-in, Fenris and Hawke find themselves rather trapped.


**AN:** I wish this one had a better inspiration than a daydream, but...it, uh, doesn't. Any similarities between the events of this fic and dear Jade's_ Surprise _are due entirely to both her genius and my being a completely predictable twit.

* * *

**Quake**

_Hero:_ Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.  
—_Much Ado about Nothing, _III.i

—

It's dark. It's dark and her ears are ringing and her hair's stuck to her temple with something hot and wet that she's pretty sure is blood. She can't see it in the dark and doesn't quite dare to lift her fingers; her hands and knees are flat on the stone beneath her, supporting her beneath the terrible weight of—

Ah. She remembers. The cave collapsed.

Hawke blinks, opening her eyes as wide as they will go in the unfeeling dark. Only a shift of her weight and one of the great stones aligned along her spine groans and cracks; she stills, terrified of breaking the tenuous balance that keeps the untold weight of the rock above her from collapsing in on itself, and drags in a shallow breath. No telling the air left. No telling the time remaining before her unimpressive strength buckles.

It had been so _sudden. _Isabela and Aveline had been behind, arguing good-naturedly over nothing in particular; she and Fenris had moved just ahead, exhausted and entirely satisfied with the expunging of the slavers haunting this little cave off the Wounded Coast. Then Isabela had called out, nothing of amusement left in her voice—but Hawke's foot had already come down on the hidden plate, and then the cave floor had split beneath her and Fenris like crooked teeth cracking wide, silt and roots alike sliding through her frantic fingers as the worn walls rippled and sighed and bent down to meet them, until the world was roaring rock and no purchase, until there was only darkness and the deep frantic shout of her name.

She has no idea how far they are beneath the surface. No idea, either, if Isabela and Aveline have escaped; there is no sound but her own breathing, close and high and deadened by the press of stone at all sides, and Hawke forces herself to something nearer calmness. Not enough mana after hours of battle to waste with magelights and fists of earth, not when she does not know—if Fenris—not yet.

Rock on every side. Rough under her palms and knees where she crouches on all fours, rough enough to tear the cloth of her trousers and scrape against her tingling skin; smooth at her left, one enormous piece of cave-floor angling above her like the sloping wall of a tent; fallen rocks and pebbles and slag behind her and to her right, mortared with earth, the mass of it immeasurable in the dark and _heavy_, pinning her with sheer weight against the smooth sloped wall on her other side. Her calves are hidden beneath this rubble too, held immobile knee to toe in a grip as solid and unyielding as any marble statue. Three great boulders above her, pressing down with blunted edges into her spine, her hip, the back of her neck to bend it low; she does not know what lucky glance of the Maker kept them from crushing her, but the tenuous balance they have against each other shifts with a warning groan when she bends, and she does not dare move again. Instead Hawke draws in three long, slow, silent breaths, one for each massive weight.

"Enough," she whispers aloud, as much for the sound of it as the sentiment, and something cold and _alive_ skitters over the back of her hand.

Hawke screams. She can't help it, doesn't even _try_; and then somewhere over the high hard thudding of her heart she hears the rough, familiar draw of a deep breath.

"Fenris?" she says, disbelieving. There is no answer, this minute sanctuary silent; then at last he breathes again, and Hawke lets out her own in answer. Not rock pressed against her shin, she realizes when it stirs, feebly—Fenris's knee. Not the edge of stone driving into the inside of her wrist—the ridge of his breastplate, rising with the inhale. He must be on his side beneath her, partly twisted between her arms; she can feel his legs stretching into the scree alongside hers now that she knows what they are, worn leather on both sides of her left leg held wholly still by stone. His hands—she can hear them, metal on stone, gauntlets glancing off the rubble, brushing again over the back of her wrist as he struggles to wake. Sword gone; staff gone. She cannot see his face.

"Fenris," Hawke says again. She does not panic. She does not.

He'd reached for her, she remembers, when the floor had opened. He'd said her name with fear in his voice.

She aches to hold him. "_Fenris_."

A staggering gasp; then, movement against her arm. A twist and a quick, aborted touch of her forearm, and Fenris says, hoarsely, "Hawke?"

"Don't move. The cave collapsed." She swallows hard, choking on relief. "Are you all right?"

Their little hollow fills briefly with the creak of leather and the higher, rippling noise of pebbles cascading down the crevices at Hawke's right. Fenris stills until the stone settles, until Hawke's heart has stumbled into starting again. "My legs. I'm trapped."

"Same."

"Aveline? Isabela?"

"I'm not sure. I hope…I'm not sure."

He pauses, and Hawke feels him turn to his back, his shoulders pressed against her wrists, his breath touching the skin of her throat. "You're hurt."

"Not seriously."

"I smell blood."

Her temple. Clotting now, and sticky. She can't feel it beneath the fear. "Nothing to worry about. Just pinned. There's…" Hawke laughs, appalled. "I think I'm holding up the roof, Fenris."

Gauntlet-tips brush her knuckles, trace up her bruised arm, over her shoulder, along the line of her neck where her head is bent beneath stone. She hears the scrape of steel as Fenris touches the ceiling, testing its nonexistent give, the push of one against its massive fellows. The sound moves left, then right, then outward past his head: rock in every direction, impossible to shift and as unyielding. Black as pitch, but the sound is near enough Hawke knows his arm cannot straighten in a single direction.

"Well," Hawke says at last, striving for levity, "found a way out of here yet?"

Fenris snorts, but his hand returns to her wrist. She is grateful for that. "Stay calm, Hawke."

"I am calm. I'm as calm as Calenhad on a spring day. I'm a single yellow daisy in the gentlest breeze you've ever felt. I don't know why you'd imply I'm not calm."

"_Hawke_."

"Stop wasting air."

"Be still," Fenris says, gentler than she expects, and his other hand taps lightly against the rock wall above his head. "There is a draft here. Can you feel it?"

It takes some doing to tamp down the terror, to let herself grow aware of more things than the crush of stone and sweat beading the back of her neck, but eventually, the slightest breath of fresh air brushes over Hawke's cheek. "Wonderful," she says, and carefully points her face towards it. "Now we've only got death by starvation to fear."

A short pause.

"Shit," Hawke says, and digs her fingernails into cold grit. "Don't give me that look."

His voice is dry. "Your eyes are stronger than mine."

"Blame my familiarity with your deafening silences. Fenris, I've got hardly any magic left. I used almost everything against those slavers."

"As did I." A peculiar tone, rueful and grimly satisfied at once. "You have no potion?"

"I don't think so. Check my belt."

The clink of metal clasps, and then his bare hand slides up her arm, over her shoulder and ribs, along her waist to the wide, roughened leather of her belt. A half-dozen pouches and purses are tied there, utility superseding fashion; his fingers dip carefully into each one, searching among the sovereigns and empty vials and half-rolled bandages for lyrium she does not have. His hand withdraws, flattens over the curve of her waist.

"Nothing," says Hawke, and is aghast to feel the sudden clench of tears in her throat. She swallows hard, trying to force it through; instead her breath comes thin and shuddering, and Fenris's hand tightens on her waist.

"Hawke?"

She laughs, loud and too sharp, and Fenris flinches. "Sorry. Slap me. I'm hysterical."

She hears him let out a breath; then his hand moves swiftly to her neck, fingers cool on her too-warm skin. She stills, uncertain, and then leather shifts and weight pushes on stone and Fenris's mouth glances clumsily across her jaw. Her head half-turns, searching blindly—and this time his lips close over her own, sure and strong and without hesitation, even in the absolute dark.

Hawke closes her eyes all the same. The pads of his fingers press into her neck, holding her in place; his thumb slides along her jaw in short, smooth strokes. Hawke wants to curse; instead she tips her face and presses harder against him, breathing in through her nose, opening her mouth to him as if she will drown. Perhaps she is. Perhaps she has already, and there is nothing but this left to her. Perhaps—

A distant stone cracks like a world, and the roof begins to collapse.

Hawke gasps, tearing away, and curves her spine against the sudden colossal weight; Fenris's hands slam one-two to the stone beside her head, as useless a defense as her stiffened thighs, her locked elbows. Rock rumbles, shifting above her, silt sifting down around them both—one of the great stones drops an inch deeper into her spine, then two—the rubble stirs around her legs and she grits her teeth, reaching for the bare tatters of magic—

Then—silence.

The world is no brighter when she opens her eyes again, blinking dirt down her cheeks. Neither is it markedly smaller, though the rock's edge digging into her back is more piercing, and she wishes she were not afraid to sigh relief. She says, half-laughing, "All alive down there?"

Fenris grunts. Small stones patter down the backs of her legs, across the hollows of her knees; Fenris grunts again, and dirt shifts, and all at once his left leg comes free in a shower of rattling rock.

Hawke freezes as the roof groans, as the walls shiver and creak and grind against each other. Eventually, the world settles again, and Fenris's hand re-closes around her wrist. Hawke lets out a little shuddering laugh. "Warn me next time. Ass."

"Apologies. I didn't mean to frighten you."

"Yes, well. A little blind terror never hurt anyone."

He touches her jaw. "I am sorry, Hawke."

_Maker_, she wishes she could see him. Wishes she could see anything but this total _blackness_. "Not sorry enough not to do it again."

"No," he agrees, and she feels his freed foot brace against the stone pinning her knee.

"Go slowly." Her arms tremble.

He does. Each inch is excruciating, unsteady stone threatening every moment to give way around them. She can hear his hand slide on the smooth stone to her left, searching for leverage, his fingers sinking into the looser rock on her other side. The boulders above her give and press and give again, tempted even by these tiny movements. The risk is high, but the reward—regardless, she has some strength left. Enough to save one. Enough to save Fenris.

Fenris's knee strikes her ribs as his foot pulls loose at last, a glancing blow that drives a gasp from her all same. He goes wholly still; then his hands go to cup her jaw, and the air moves as he curls up nearer her face, as his weight slides over the rough rock. "Forgive me."

"Gladly." She turns her head, catches a lucky kiss on his bare palm as it withdraws. "How does it feel to have two working feet?"

"Envy," Fenris says dryly, over the sound of his hands dragging on stone, "does not become you."

"No, but I bet I can find rage in about a heartbeat if you don't get us out of here."

"Says she, who has not moved."

"Says she who's holding up the roof."

He snorts, and his shoulders push against hers as he searches the wall behind her. "And now you resort to excuses. Isabela has taught you too well."

"She certainly taught me how to get into a number of tight places."

"And out of none of them," Fenris adds, and she wishes she could laugh. Hawke knows what he's doing, appreciates it too—but she is a mage and not a warrior, and despite Fenris's efforts at distraction she cannot ignore the agony in her back, the throbbing ache in her hips, the screaming muscles along her arms. She is meant for no weapon heavier than her father's staff; she has not been made to buttress the crumbling walls of a collapsed cave.

Neither does she need to know Arcanum to know that Fenris's bitten oath is not a promising sign. Their tiny refuge is too short for him to sit up, narrow enough to press her shoulders on both sides; the only space is ahead, but even that is small enough a mabari pup could not curl comfortably. Fenris resettles beneath her instead, now-freed knees crooked around her hips, and lets out a short, frustrated breath. "I cannot shift this, Hawke."

"No more than I expected." She is startled to realize this is true. "We just have to—wait a couple hours or so. A little longer, maybe, at least for me. How fast does your lyrium, um. Recharge?"

"Sooner than that." He sighs again, metal clinking as his gauntlets snap back into place. "Not soon enough."

"Well. I won't argue with _that_."

"A novelty," Fenris says, and his fingers touch her wrist again, colder behind steel. "Where is your wound?"

She snorts. "Which one?"

"Your blood is on my fingers, Hawke."

"Oh," she mutters. "That one." A long silence; then she says, "My head. The right side."

She expects his touch; she startles all the same when cold fingers glance across her cheek. Fenris does not apologize and she does not expect one; instead his palms curve to her cheeks, steel-shielded hands sliding carefully upwards into her tangled, sweat-stiffened hair. The brush of touch against the wound brings an unwilling gasp to her throat, surprising her again with its force, but he is gentle as he traces the length of it, the breadth.

"You will live," he says eventually, voice dry, and Hawke laughs despite the throbbing agony in her back.

"Thank the Maker for small blessings. At least I haven't got a headache."

His touch moves to her knees, then, to the earth that has poured over her legs, and his fingers curl around her thigh. "I suggest we try to pull you loose."

"I don't know if that's a good idea. I don't trust the roof to hold if I go moving about beneath it."

"You would prefer to remain trapped?"

"I'd prefer to prolong my survival as long as possible," Hawke says tartly, but when his grip tightens she flattens her palms against the ground. "You bloody—_fine. _Three—two—"

Fenris pulls, and Hawke pulls, and despite the crumbling of crushed rock around their shoulders her feet move exactly nowhere. Not even enough freedom to yank free of her boots within the slide; she's wedged in so tightly Fenris's fingers begin to bruise rather than brace. They try again, and a third time, and when their efforts still produce no movement Hawke calls the matter finished. "For the moment, anyway," she adds, and grunts as she resettles herself under stone. "_Maker_, I wish I had Merrill's touch for earth magic."

"More magic. Precisely what the situation requires."

Hawke scoffs. "Well, if you're going to be snippy about it, I've got _loads _of blood right here. All over my face. Absolutely rife with power, I'm certain."

The roll of Fenris's eyes is nearly audible, but Hawke is given little time to appreciate it. Instead he moves again, his chest lifting to press against her chest, his shoulders turning, his hand sliding along her robes until he grasps her upper arm. Hawke closes her eyes against the fall of dirt his movement disturbs, and when she opens them again Fenris has wedged himself along the smooth slanted wall beside her, his thigh beside hers, his back and one shoulder pressed hard against her chest. His cheek rests on her own.

"No," Hawke says.

"You won't last."

"I can bear it."

"You are trembling."

"Excitement," Hawke suggests, but the excuse is feeble. It's only—she is—she is there, and she is _afraid—_

"Hawke," Fenris says, and turns until his mouth is against the bone of her cheek. "Will you trust me?"

A cruel question. She breathes, "Yes."

A pause, and a breath, and a shift of muscle—and then his weight comes up and against her, hard, unforgiving as any fisted stone of Merrill's. It is hard to yield, harder not to cry out—but she is strong and she trusts Fenris, and when her elbow buckles she does not fight it, does not stop the quick fall of her shoulder after it. Fenris lets out a breath, shoves again—and then somehow she is flat on her stomach and her face is pressed hard to rock and Fenris is above her and the world is groaning, buckling, sediment scattering over her hands and back where her robes are torn. A yelp of pain swells in her throat and she bites her tongue instead, eyes clenched against the sudden piercing ache of too-tense muscles strained without warning, against the spasms brought by stiffened bones torn from old stress into new too quickly.

The dirt settles. The stone quiets. Fenris says, softly, "Hawke?"

"Fine," she breathes, mouth to stone, and her bark of laughter is nearer kin to a sob. "I'm fine, Fenris."

"Look at me."

"Look at _what_?" she snaps, relief from one burden crackling in her skin, new giddy fear from another settling hot and tight in her belly. She twists as best she can with her legs still trapped from the knees down, every joint afire with release. "Amazing. More blackness."

Fenris snorts; then a point of light sparks like the strike of flint, cool and pale and trembling against the dark, and as she watches it curls downward, growing stronger, unfurling along the narrow lines on Fenris's throat like the graceful growth of new vine. Light burnishes the underside of his chin, the long curve of his ear; Hawke feels it touch her face across the space between them, dancing soft shadows across her eyes, and she lifts one hand to the lit lip of his breastplate.

She says, "I see you."

Sees, too, that his eyes are drawn tight with worry and the new weight bearing down on his back; that his mouth is creased with tension. His hands are braced on either side of her shoulders, his knees pressed against the outsides of her knees, white lyrium-light trickling down this mirror of her own time spent as unwilling pillar. Even as she watches he winces and moves against the stone ceiling and Hawke winces with him, knowing the bone-deep bruises the immense pressure works even now into his back. In this light she can see the stone imprisoning them, close and smooth on one side, a broken crush of debris on the other. Grey above Fenris, rough and stained with water, sharper silver edges where the fall has broken back the rock.

Fenris's hair is very pale in the light, paler still against the stone that pins him. Still, she does not look away as he studies the bleeding place on her temple—and when his eyes come back to hers there is no falter behind the weight, no uncertainty, no fear.

Only resolve. Only trust.

"I love you," Hawke says then, because it seems like something that should be known. "In case we die, know that."

"_Hawke_," Fenris breathes, eyes abruptly blazing brighter than lyrium ever could; the tips of his gauntlets clench into the stone at her shoulders. "Hawke—"

Her lips quirk. She has never said it before, unwilling to risk so much so quickly; now there is no time to waste and less chance even than that for regret. Hawke pushes herself to her elbows and further without thought for the strain on her twisted hips, closing her lips over his, curling her fingers over his fingers, unwilling to shut her eyes against this precious allotment of brilliance. It is too dim to see green but she knows the color all the same, and Fenris does not temper his burning with gentleness. His mouth comes hard against hers, his tongue insistent; he makes a rough, demanding noise when her mouth opens and she presses closer, wanting more, wanting everything.

For an instant there is no cave, no dark, no stone. For an instant Hawke laughs, unfettered, and tightens her grip on Fenris's hand. Too soon, though, the distant rumble of rock giving way reminds her, and the damp cold smell of stone reminds her, and Hawke tries to forces her heart to steady with the earth's easing around them.

"Are you all right?" she asks softly, her mouth against his mouth.

"Yes," he says, and she feels the faint brush of a laugh on her lips. "It is heavier than I expected."

"You're too generous."

"And you are stronger than you pretend to be."

Hawke shakes her head as she lies back, smiling; Fenris arches an eyebrow, and slowly, the light along his throat goes out. She knows why he does it, knows conservation of strength is more vital than a moment's comfort—but—

She turns back to her stomach, pillowing her head on her arms, relieving what deep aches she can in her spine and shoulders. Her throat is tight.

But they are trapped, and she is afraid, and now there is nothing to do but wait.

Time passes oddly in the dark. She can track it well enough in the beginning by the slow rise of her magic, by the rate of her own heartbeat; then it's lost, somehow, to the unsteady rumbling of distant rock, to Fenris's slower breathing, to the peculiar stretch of seconds into hours and hours into no time at all. They're quiet, mostly, saving strength, saving their patience with each other; occasionally they speak to be certain the other still lives, or that Fenris's back still holds against the inexorable roof, but soon enough the close silence falls again. The rockfall is too unstable to dare shift with anything less than full effort on both their parts, and with no hint of outside aid or even of the true depth of their small refuge, for now they must—endure.

It unsettles her, how near they've come to an end. In truth are _still_ near it, despite this momentary truce with the earth, despite the inexhaustible wellspring of Fenris's stubborn determination. But that is a useless thought and gate only to thoughts more foolish, and Hawke casts her mind as far from it as she can. Beginnings, then.

Oh, she misses Lothering. Not enough to return to it, shell of a town as it is now, but the Lothering of her memory still reigns as home: breezes trickling through endless grain fields; thick-boled trees standing watch around the farmhouses, scattered like thrown stones across the countryside; the Chantry, proud and square and with real glass in the windows, the grandest thing she'd ever seen before the high white arches of Kirkwall's gates lifted their regal curves over her head.

Carver had gotten himself trapped like this, once. Not quite the same—no glowing elf kneeling above him, for a start—but he'd found an abandoned well on the edge of Barlin's pear grove when he was fourteen, and despite Bethany's warnings he'd toppled right in. It hadn't been more than ten feet deep, her brother unwounded save pride, but neither she nor Bethany had been strong enough to pull him out alone, and they'd had to fetch their father for assistance. Carver hadn't spoken to them for weeks. Never forgotten it either, poor fool.

One gone, one going, and both of them buried in the earth as surely as she. He'd been so _worried _about where the shadows fell, then. About keeping out of others.

Hawke snorts into her arms, closing her eyes against the dark.

Fenris stirs for what feels like the first time in an age. "Something amuses you?"

A laugh not worth the bitterness. "Thinking of beginnings."

"Oh?"

She looks left as if the wall holds answers; then inspiration strikes and she says, genuinely curious, "How did you meet Anso?"

"_Anso_," Fenris repeats, blank surprise in his voice. He makes a quick, thoughtful noise as another faint rumble rolls over them, searching through years for the memory, and says at last, "I had been in Kirkwall a week. I knew my hunters were close behind me; they had found me in the last two cities within a fortnight."

"You didn't fight them then."

"No. Against so many I would have fallen. I needed someone to fight alongside me, but I found it difficult to spare the time and coin for a mercenary who would neither die quickly nor betray me for his own profit. I avoided the streets as much as possible, but I wished… I was tired of running." Leather scrapes against stone as Fenris shifts his shoulders, redistributing the rocks' weight. His voice is thoughtful enough that Hawke feels no need to interrupt, though she permits herself a brush of her fingertips over his knuckles.

"I watched the markets," Fenris continues, "and looked for someone with both the skill to find me a mercenary and enough desperation that he wouldn't question my coin. And few connections in the city, should negotiations…go poorly."

"How diplomatically said. I'll rub your back when we get home, if you like."

"I…may accept that offer." A sigh. "As it stood, Anso seemed a fine prospect."

"I never did know how much of the 'surface dwarf' act was—an act."

"Very little." Fenris snorts a laugh. "We met in a tavern in Lowtown. He promised me a mercenary of merit within two days. I paid him with a promise of my own, and three nights later, Danarius's hunters set the ambush."

"Mm. Yes. I was there for that part."

"I told you then there were more than I expected."

"No, no, it's fine. You wouldn't believe how many couples I know first met through wanton bloodshed."

Fenris laughs again. He says, "I did not expect _you_."

Hawke smiles, knowing he cannot see it, knowing the little place where their fingers touch will never convey to him the impossible breaking of her heart. "You know you were just as much a surprise, serah. The Red Irons never set me against anything more exciting than smuggler gangs who wouldn't pay the Coterie their cut. And then suddenly there was this terribly angry elf with the most awkward, embarrassed laugh I'd ever heard. I was smitten."

There is silence then, and Hawke imagines his face. A smile, she thinks, though not a large one—one of those crooked smirks that only turn up one corner of his mouth. The lines around his eyes softened if only a moment in amusement. Perhaps a bit of that unruly white hair falling in his eyes, in desperate need of cutting and just as attractive to her long as short. "I'm pleased to have entertained you, then," he says, dryness not hiding his amusement.

"More than that," Hawke points out, grinning, and a wet droplet splashes against the back of her hand.

She touches the tips of her fingers to it, then to her mouth. Bitter salt, and oddly metallic— "Are you sweating?" Hawke asks, and knows the answer before he gives it.

"No."

"Not bleeding, either."

"Nothing more than scratches."

"Shit," Hawke says, and twists to her side. Her palm touches dry wall, dry rubble, skitters across the rough, broken ceiling—there. A seam between two of the great stones Fenris holds at bay, beading water that drips again even as she touches it. "_Shit_," Hawke says again, and rubs the wetness between her fingertips. That last tremor— "We may have to try for freedom sooner than we'd like."

All softness—gone in an instant. Fenris's arms are rigid by her shoulders. "There were no rivers near this cave."

"An underground stream, maybe. Runoff from the cliffs? Or we could be deeper than we thought." Hawke closes her eyes, flattening her hand against the crevice; slowly—too slowly—ice creeps from her skin, winding lazily into the gaps and nooks, thickening, hardening until the water ceases, seepage stoppered with little more than magic and her will. "That won't hold it for long. Especially not if the rocks start moving."

"How long?"

"Honestly—not the faintest idea. A few minutes. Half an hour. How long will the water take to reach us if it's only started dripping now?"

Flatly, Fenris says, "I do not know."

"All the more reason to get out of here as soon as possible."

"And where would you recommend we go, Hawke?" Fenris snaps. Lyrium catches in gasps and flickers down his arms, his throat, his stomach through his leathers: a skeleton of light.

"Why don't you come with me?" suggests Merrill.

An instant of astonished silence—and then stone cracks with a sigh, and Fenris twitches as Hawke yanks a wisp of magelight out of her dwindled reserves.

It _is _Merrill, flat on her stomach, head and shoulders showing through the fresh break in the stone at their heads. Stark, cool shadows flicker over her earth-smudged vallaslin, the wisp throwing weird glimmers over the crumbling tunnel that slopes up behind her. All the same, in that moment Hawke thinks she has never seen anything so beautiful in her life as Merrill's smile.

"Flames," Hawke says, unable to quite hide the shaking of her voice, "but you have the most _incredible_ timing."

She beams. "Thank you, lethallan. Only…." she glances at the roof, at Hawke twisted under Fenris's caging arms, the magelight bobbing around all three of them aimlessly. "How are we to get you out?"

"Hawke is trapped," Fenris says tersely, and even as well as Hawke knows the shades of his tone she still nearly misses his terrible relief.

They have had no luck pulling her legs free before, but neither has there been impending flood before; Hawke shoves forward and back again, spine pressing against the hard ridges of Fenris's breastplate and bending away again, searching for any give to the fall of rubble that covers her toe to knee. But there is still the same freedom: that is, no freedom at all.

Somewhere, a wall bursts.

They hear the thunder before it strikes; then the rushing of water sounds behind them, above them, and above it rings the higher nearer cracking of ice.

"_Hawke_," Fenris says, tense and low.

"Time to go," she sing-songs against the fear, yanking again, failing again to pull herself from the stone's grip. Hawke grunts, turns to her back, finds Merrill's eyes above her head and holds them. "Okay. Here's the plan. Merrill, make the tunnel just a bit taller. Fenris, you go out after her as soon as you can. I'll hold the roof as long as it takes you to get into the tunnel—don't you _dare _give me that look, I've got the strength for that and you _know _it—and then Merrill will knock the earth over my legs loose and you'll pull me out."

Merrill's silent doubt speaks volumes; Fenris keeps no such reservations. "You will kill all three of us."

"Oh, thanks for the vote of confidence."

"That is a fool's plan, Hawke," Fenris snarls, and it maddens her that even the curl of his lip gives comfort after so long in the dark. "There is no chance—"

The ceiling breaks.

One stone slides one way with a grinding groan, another the opposite—and all at once Hawke's icy stopgap shatters into a dozen pieces, scattering around her head like broken glass. No drip follows, not any longer; now it is a stream, a rushing faucet of salt-thick water as wide as Hawke's hand and less that distance from her hair. It sprays across Hawke's face like spittle and she jerks away; when she looks up again Fenris's jaw is hard, his shoulders set, his eyes boring into hers.

"There's no time left to debate this," Hawke says, lifting her chin. Champion, now. Nothing less, nothing else. "I'm making this call, Fenris."

A muscle in his throat jumps, lyrium-light glinting off the wet silt-choked spatter on his skin; then he jerks a nod, and as the rumbling of Merrill's magic works to widen the tunnel Hawke flattens her palms to the ceiling on either side of Fenris's chest.

His ribs spread hard and quick against her wrists. "Do not die."

"Nothing to worry about," Hawke tells him, smiling.

Then the walls crack clean through and Merrill shouts, and there is no more time.

It no longer matters what magic she does not have. Now there is only what is left, and Hawke forces every last shred of strength against the ceiling in one flat blow that shakes dust into the air. "Go," she grits out, and Fenris hesitates; she glares and shouts, _"Go!"_ and then Fenris is bending down, yielding the weight to her hands and to her strength, straining knee and hand toward the narrow dark gap of Merrill's tunnel. His bare, dirt-stained feet come down at her waist, at her shoulder; his hand splashes into the growing pools of murky water until the taste of it beads on Hawke's lips.

"Come on," she mutters, staring upwards, blinking away sweat and salt, dizzied with dancing magelight and sheer effort. It is so heavy—it is _so heavy_, so much worse than the bearing of it on her back, and no matter the broad spreading of her magic across the ceiling she can feel the weak places, the cracks in her strength like the cracks in stone, ready with only the barest break to give way and crush her beneath it. "Come on, come on, _Maker_, hurry up—"

Then Fenris is gone, and there is nothing left but her own hands to hold back death.

"Now, just turn a little—"

"I _have_ her—back away—"

"Lethallan, we're nearly ready! Just a moment longer—"

Hands clamp hard around her shoulders, fingers curling under and upward, the sharp steel-tips of Fenris's gauntlets digging into the soft skin beneath her arms. Dirt scrapes as he twists, bracing his feet on outcropped rock at her sides; Merrill's voice fades and bursts again just behind, the shadow of her outstretched arm strafing over Hawke's face. The water is louder now, nearer, threat and promise alike and rushing in an ever-widening fall into the cave, lapping at Hawke's jaw and throat. She swallows hard. "Just saying—I'm ready any second now!"

"Almost," Fenris grits out, his hands tightening into her skin. Her joints ache with tension.

"_Now_!" Merrill cries, and the cave explodes.

Magic sears the air around her outstretched arms, the sheer power of Merrill's earth blistering back the stone; the world lights a brilliant, terrifying lyrium-blue; Hawke blows raw force against the ceiling, striking hard enough the massive weight of it lifts an instant from her hands. Fenris shouts, _pulls—_and then she is _moving_, dragging free boots and all, earth's impossible grip giving way at last beneath the colossal crush of magic and unchecked water. But the shift has at last broken the world's careful balance—her arms buckle without warning and Fenris shouts again, and then the roof snaps free of her hold and there is nothing she can do but clench her eyes shut, bracing herself against the death-blow even as Fenris yanks her from it—

Her back scrapes raw on stone, her nose cracking against the tunnel's edge so hard the skin splits, and Fenris's hands dig into her arms until the bones bruise. Somehow they are in the tunnel, scrambling upwards, the world sliding out from beneath them even as they reach for it. Stone crashes against stone and the water roars; Hawke screams as much for the sound of it as the fury, the fear breaking shell-like from around her heart. "Go!" she shrieks, unable to hear herself over the thunder, unable to see, to breathe, to know anything left of the world but Fenris's hands and Merrill's magic and her own heart hammering in her throat. Dirt crumbles around them where they crawl, shale and bedrock alike splitting into shards like glass; her knee thuds into Merrill's hip and Fenris's arms come hard around her chest as he shoves all three of them farther from their abandoned, collapsing cave, and the tunnel groans and trembles and Fenris pins her with his full weight against the wall—

Then—

Silence. Or—not _true _silence, but close enough, the world stilling, slowing beneath the ringing in Hawke's ears. She blinks, dizzy in the dark—her magelight is gone, she realizes muzzily, and cannot find the strength for another. Alive, though, to realize its absence.

_Alive_, Hawke thinks again, and the fog shreds away before elation. Alive! And unharmed, relatively speaking, and _mobile—_she can't quite yet feel her feet beneath the tingling of such prolonged entrapment, but Merrill's tunnel has held well enough that she can feel the open spaces ahead if not behind, the promise of fresh air even farther along. Without warning, she bursts into high, giddy laughter, and Hawke covers her useless eyes as Fenris's arms tighten around her. "Oh, _flames_," she swears, and turns her face into Fenris's neck. "This is preposterous."

"As I recall, it was _your _plan," murmurs Fenris, his voice rumbling in his chest. "Are you surprised?"

Hawke laughs again, drunk with freedom; then she gropes outward in the darkness until she finds Merrill's foot, Merrill's knee where the elf is stretched out ahead of them both. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, yes. That was terribly exciting, wasn't it? I thought for sure you'd be squashed."

"You weren't the only one. Merrill, what happened to Aveline and Isabela? Did they make it out?"

Her noise of distress is nearly a bird's chirp. "Didn't I tell you? I'm so sorry! They're both perfectly fine—or they will be, I suppose, once Isabela's broken arm is mended and Aveline gets over her concussion. Really, they said they were quite all right once Anders got hold of them, and they'd be the ones to know, wouldn't they? They were up at the top with Varric and Sebastian just a little while ago, trying to help us pick which directions to search."

"Thank the Maker," Hawke chokes out, and then she pulls and Merrill tugs and Fenris turns and somehow she manages to get her arms around them both, holding them to her in an awkward embrace despite the cramped, crumbling tunnel, despite the unrelenting dark. Fenris grunts, sighs, and yields, sliding his hand around her waist until her ear is against his heart; Merrill tucks her cheek against Hawke's and smiles. _Palpable _is not a strong enough word for her relief; instead it sits stone-hard in her chest, stifling her breath, knocking bruises on her ribcage with every heartbeat. Aveline, Isabela, Fenris, herself.

_Alive._

"I don't suppose," Hawke says eventually, when she can speak again, "that you found my staff."

Merrill's eyelashes brush over Hawke's cheek as she nods. "It never fell. When we showed up with Anders, there it was, poking right out of the rockslide like a mark on a map. A bit dented, but in one piece. And _then _I found Fenris's sword while I was burrowing, so we have that too!"

Hawke snorts, because of _course_ she did—but she feels the barest sliver of tension bleed from Fenris's shoulders, ever so slightly loosening his grip on her waist. "I thought," she murmurs as Merrill pulls free and begins to make her way upward again, "that you didn't care for that sword."

His mouth turns up briefly against her hair. He says, "It was a gift."

"You goose," Hawke says, touched despite herself, and lets him push her away into the darkness, towards the soft sounds of Merrill's progress leading them back to the sun.

It takes so little time after that last instant of fear that it surprises her. One moment they are hands and knees on a faint incline, nothing the sounds of skin on stone and rough breathing—and then all at once the tunnel turns sharply upward and there is—_light_, grey and weak but more than any magelight, any torch could ever burn. It brightens as they climb, turning warmer, thickening like honey; then Merrill reaches up into the light and her arms vanish and someone speaks and she _vanishes_, gone, pulled away, and there is nothing between Hawke and daylight.

"Here," says a voice. Sebastian. _Sebastian's _voice, and Sebastian's broad smile and Sebastian's hand stretched out before her. She reaches for him, feels his strong warm fingers wrap around her own—and then she is _standing_, in light, in a long water-smoothed cave with walls that arch high above her head, roof-high rubble at her back but in the distance, stretching towards her feet, a small solid circle of sun.

"Took you long enough." Isabela smirks, swinging out a hip. One arm is held close to her chest with a linen sling; then other she fists on her waist, her long shadow dancing over Hawke's dirt-stained boots. The embrace is awkward and perfect; Aveline's is the same when Hawke turns to see her approaching, a brilliant smile beneath the bruise on her cheek. Anders is there too, one glowing hand already raised to her temple; Hawke laughs, and pulls him close, and somewhere between him and Varric and Sebastian and Fenris, lifted from the hole at last, she realizes they are going to live. She is utterly filthy, scraped to pieces head to toe, her legs a mess and every joint in her body aching, but—

Fenris's hand touches low on her back. It is only a brief thing and then gone, and then he stands beside her, rolling his shoulders, shaking the dirt from his hair like a dog after a bath.

Hawke stretches both arms above her head, arching until her spine pops and her elbows creak with strain, until she is lightheaded enough to stagger. Varric snorts and Isabela bumps her with her good elbow, and Merrill presses her father's staff into her hands to make her whole.

"Maker," Aveline says, sighing at the rockfall, "but I'm ready to be _done _with this place."

"As am I," Fenris says shortly, though a smile quirks his mouth as he looks to her.

Hawke slings her staff home and grins. "Lead the way," she tells him.

"I enjoy," he murmurs, his head bent to her ear, his hand curling around hers, squeezing once, hard, "following you."

Hawke laughs, and tucks her arm into his, and they walk from the cave side-by-side instead.


End file.
